New Britain Mayor There are two questions encompassing the proposed changes to the city’s Charter that will appear on the Election Day…
Posted: 30 September 2022 [12:35 PM] Columns
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Posted: 30 September 2022 [12:35 PM] Recent Headlines
Friday 09/16/2022
FRIDAY FICKS: It's never too late Posted: 16 September 2022 [11:43 AM] Friday Ficks Jimmy Buffett once sang "We all got 'em, we all want 'em. What do we do with 'em?" Although he…
Friday 09/02/2022
ERIN STEWART: New Britain deserves professional leadership to ensure future success Posted: 02 September 2022 [12:06 PM] New Britain Mayor The city of New Britain is Connecticut’s seventh-largest municipality. We serve, protect and educate over 73,000 residents. There are…
FRIDAY FICKS: The dash between the years Posted: 02 September 2022 [11:58 AM] Friday Ficks A lifelong friend from Berlin died in June at the age of 59. A California resident at the time he…
Friday 08/26/2022
FRIDAY FICKS: Riding on the surface of the sun Posted: 26 August 2022 [10:34 AM] Friday Ficks I rode my bike on the surface of the sun. The heat index was well over 100 degrees on the day…
Friday 08/05/2022
FRIDAY FICKS: Of waterfalls, wellness and anvils Posted: 05 August 2022 [10:08 AM] FRIDAY FICKS: Of waterfalls, wellness and anvils Friday Ficks There’s an ultra distance running book called “Relentless Forward Progress.” It popped to…
Thursday 08/04/2022
ERIN STEWART: Residents can expect Charter revision questions on ballots in November Posted: 04 August 2022 [11:28 AM] New Britain Mayor Since January the city has been in the process of considering multiple reforms to the City Charter, which is…
Friday 07/15/2022
FRIDAY FICKS: Create your own medal-worthy moments Posted: 15 July 2022 [10:43 AM] Friday Ficks Every moment of your life can be a medal-worthy moment. If you embrace failure, stay resilient, and control the controllable.…
Friday 07/01/2022
ERIN STEWART: New Britain bridges digital divide with citywide fiber internet connectivity project Posted: 01 July 2022 [12:15 PM] New Britain Mayor One of the many lessons we learned from the covid-19 pandemic was just how much students and families depend on…
FRIDAY FICKS: Heads up, phones down Posted: 01 July 2022 [11:58 AM] Friday Ficks The bear saw me before I saw it. Hammering along the spine of Avon Mountain, I spotted a large pile…
Friday 06/17/2022
FRIDAY FICKS: Stay connected to, and involved with, your community Posted: 17 June 2022 [04:08 PM] Friday Ficks He died five weeks before the race. But I needed him that morning. I needed his encouragement. I needed his…
Monday 06/06/2022
ERIN STEWART: Summer fun is endless in New Britain Posted: 06 June 2022 [02:25 PM] New Britain Mayor The school year is coming to an end, temperatures are rising, and summer is finally here in New Britain.…
Monday 05/30/2022
Posted: 30 May 2022 [02:53 PM] CHRIS POWELL Connecticut's 5th Congressional District, encompassing the northwest part of the state, running from Danbury north to Waterbury with eastward extensions to New Britain and Meriden, is generally considered the state's most politically competitive. So one might think…
Friday 05/27/2022
Posted: 27 May 2022 [08:54 PM] CHRIS POWELL As recently as 50 years ago Connecticut politics still had traces of the old ethnic, racial, and religious resentments and rivalries that had arisen through the state's long history, resentments and rivalries that political party state tickets…
Friday 05/20/2022
Posted: 20 May 2022 [08:31 PM] CHRIS POWELL Four months after the now internationally infamous "pizza sex" assignment was given to eighth-graders at Kennedy Middle School in Enfield, the town's Board of Education has not yet figured out how it happened. Instead the board purportedly…
Monday 05/16/2022
Posted: 16 May 2022 [02:16 PM] CHRIS POWELL Both political parties in Congress want to sustain the immigration controversy for partisan purposes more than they want a compromise that could resolve the controversy's two major components -- securing the borders while providing a path to…
Friday 05/06/2022
Herald reporter looks back at an unforgettable experience being honored as part of Gallery 66's Women's History Month exhibit Posted: 06 May 2022 [03:02 PM] NEW BRITAIN – As Gallery 66’s Women’s History Month Exhibit, with myself as one of those honored, comes to an end…
HEALTHY LIVING: Jill Bertolini Symposium helps breast cancer patients Posted: 06 May 2022 [01:11 PM] The statistic is startling – according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), breast cancer is the most…
HASTINGS: Happy Mother's Day to all the best worst moms out there Posted: 06 May 2022 [12:23 PM] Thank you very much. I can't believe I'm standing up here at this podium at the Worst Mom Ever awards! I am…
FRIDAY FICKS: The gift of perspective Posted: 06 May 2022 [11:36 AM] Friday Ficks Column The Facebook post sounded pretty urgent. It read, in part, that “I have an immediate need.” Immediate is usually…
Wednesday 05/04/2022
ERIN STEWART: New Britain Charter revision process explained Posted: 04 May 2022 [10:27 AM] New Britain Mayor Over the past couple of months I have publicly mentioned that the city is in the process of considering multiple…
Tuesday 04/26/2022
Posted: 26 April 2022 [10:03 AM] Joanie Wedler, Chuck Lewis and Franck Facchini Local public access TV, or public, educational and government access (“PEG”), has been in Connecticut for more than 40 years providing residents, municipalities, schools and community organizations with hyper-local programming…
Monday 04/18/2022
MAZADOORIAN: Commemorating the Armenian Genocide of 1915: Sainthood for the victims Posted: 18 April 2022 [10:32 AM] On April 24, the world will recognize and commemorate the tragedy of the Armenian Genocide of 1915, when more than 1.5 million Armenian men…
Friday 04/15/2022
Posted: 15 April 2022 [07:53 PM] Someday, if the governor and state legislators ever tire of coddling the state employee unions and if the president and Congress ever tire of coddling investment banks and military contractors, maybe they should note what happened recently at Silver Lane…
FRIDAY FICKS: Don't transmogrify the low hanging fruit Posted: 15 April 2022 [11:25 AM] Friday Ficks "Attorney Ficks has transmogrified the facts," said my adversary in his closing argument. "He did what?" replied the arbitrator. "He…
Friday 04/08/2022
Posted: 08 April 2022 [09:06 PM] Legislators of both parties in the General Assembly are congratulating themselves on the bipartisan juvenile justice bill that has come out of the Judiciary Committee, and well they should. For the legislation will do no more than provide the illusion…
Monday 04/04/2022
Posted: 04 April 2022 [08:45 PM] By CHRIS POWELL Connecticut may be paying the Sikorsky helicopter division of military contractor Lockheed Martin as much as $250 million to keep its facilities in the state for the next 20 years -- an average of…
ERIN STEWART: New Britain's financial journey reaches stability Posted: 04 April 2022 [12:35 PM] NEW BRITAIN MAYOR It’s hard to believe, but later this month I will present my ninth budget to the Common Council since being…
Friday 04/01/2022
Posted: 01 April 2022 [09:19 PM] Everybody in state government seems to love this tax-cutting stuff -- first the temporary suspension of Connecticut's 25-cents-per-gallon gasoline tax, and then a week of lifting the sales tax on most clothing purchases. The public will love it too. But…
FRIDAY FICKS: Hope is the best of things Posted: 01 April 2022 [09:23 AM] Friday Ficks I have a dirty four letter word that I want you to use right now. It is not a four…
Friday 03/18/2022
FRIDAY FICKS: How to avoid the tree trifecta Posted: 18 March 2022 [10:32 AM] Friday Ficks Tree. Swerve. Tree. Swerve again. A third tree. Swerve again. Oh shoot...too late. This was not a trifecta at the horse track, or…
Friday 03/11/2022
Posted: 11 March 2022 [04:08 PM] Journal Inquirer Announcing goodies for various municipalities and organizations lately, Governor Lamont has been using government money to win support for his re-election campaign, as any incumbent would. But all the goodies awarded so far don't come close to…
STEWART: The state of the city is stronger than it has ever been Posted: 11 March 2022 [01:38 PM] Mayor of New Britain I recently stood before members of the Common Council, elected officials, department leaders, city employees, and my…
Wednesday 03/09/2022
Posted: 09 March 2022 [08:30 PM] Liberal Democratic members of the General Assembly again are pursuing what they call fairness in taxation, their euphemism for state government's raising and spending a lot more money. Governor Lamont, a Democrat, opposes increasing taxes while state government has a…
Monday 03/07/2022
CHRIS POWELL: Putting a cap on car taxes won't really save any money Posted: 07 March 2022 [09:13 PM] Most people seem to like Governor Lamont's proposal to reduce from 45 to 29 mills the state's limit on municipal property taxes…
Friday 03/04/2022
CHRIS POWELL: Oil, not vodka, pays for war; and Sen. Cassano gets relevant Posted: 04 March 2022 [02:37 PM] Russia's brutal invasion of Ukraine has rocketed the United States into a whirlwind of pious but ineffectual posturing. In his State of…
FRIDAY FICKS: Don't be remembered as a tip miser Posted: 04 March 2022 [11:08 AM] Friday Ficks I called them tip misers (and probably other things too, but this is a G-Rated column). The tip misers on my…
Wednesday 03/02/2022
CHRIS POWELL: Blumenthal plans his escape as inflation threatens Dems Posted: 02 March 2022 [08:55 PM] Are things getting so bad for the Democrats that even Connecticut's senior U.S. senator, Richard Blumenthal, is worried about winning re-election this…
Monday 02/28/2022
CHRIS POWELL: Stand with Ukraine'? Funny! and Lamont's befuddlement Posted: 28 February 2022 [09:15 PM] From Connecticut's congressional delegation last week the watchwords of pious posturing were: "Stand with Ukraine." Of course no one was proposing to…
Friday 02/25/2022
CHRIS POWELL: Boost political competition: Dissolve congressional districts Posted: 25 February 2022 [08:58 PM] BOOST POLITICAL COMPETITION: DISSOLVE CONGRESS DISTRICTS By CHRIS POWELL While the redrawing of congressional districts in other states has become…
Wednesday 02/23/2022
CHRIS POWELL: Newtown dumps democracy, and Lamont worsens scandal Posted: 23 February 2022 [09:36 PM] Whatever one thinks about guns, this month's $73 million lawsuit settlement paid by the insurers of the former Remington gun manufacturing company…
Tuesday 02/22/2022
Posted: 22 February 2022 [04:15 PM] Republican state legislators around the country are proposing to require public schools to post all curriculum materials on the internet as an accountability measure, and the other day they got powerful if inadvertent support from Enfield’s school system. Enfield’s school…
Friday 02/18/2022
Posted: 18 February 2022 [09:19 PM] Nobody needs the federal investigation that is under way to grasp the basics of the racket that was being run from the state budget office – the Office of Policy and Management – by its deputy secretary, Konstantinos Diamantis, who…
FRIDAY FICKS: May you fly like an eagle Posted: 18 February 2022 [10:15 AM] It materialized out of nowhere, moving just above the Farmington River, right alongside me. And I knew what it meant...and who it was. …
Wednesday 02/16/2022
CHRIS POWELL: Governor needn't raise taxes since inflation did it for him Posted: 16 February 2022 [08:55 PM] Addressing the General Assembly last week, Governor Lamont touted state government's comfortable financial position, a reversal of the position he inherited when…
Tuesday 02/15/2022
CHRIS POWELL: State won't suppress crime without restoring deterrence Posted: 15 February 2022 [08:50 PM] Connecticut lately has generated more than its share of silly paradoxes. Having given up on the futility of criminalizing marijuana, state government…
Saturday 02/12/2022
CHRIS POWELL: Teenager's missing teeth indict neglect by parents and state Posted: 12 February 2022 [12:03 PM] How, in a wealthy and highly taxed state with scores of social programs and constant prattling about unmet human needs, does a…
Wednesday 02/09/2022
CHRIS POWELL: Population gains don't help if housing doesn't keep up Posted: 09 February 2022 [09:20 PM] Maybe all those people who in the last year or so have given up on New York City and its inner suburbs…
Monday 02/07/2022
CHRIS POWELL: Wooden, Hayes and Colangelo provide a seminar on 'ethics' Posted: 07 February 2022 [09:24 PM] Connecticut's best investigative journalism so far this year was probably the Jan. 2 report by the Connecticut Mirror's Andrew Brown and Kasturi…
Friday 02/04/2022
CHRIS POWELL: Democrats replace Republicans as the party of repression Posted: 04 February 2022 [09:12 PM] For most of the last 70 years in the United States, ever since the Red Scare of the 1950s, the Republican Party…